Case Particulars

Tribunal

Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights

Date Filed

August 12, 2024

Docket No.

N/A

Case Status

Case Overview

On Tuesday morning, May 28, 2024, the Equal Protection Project delivered a letter to the Ithaca City School District (ICSD) Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown and Board of Education President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell, regarding the Student of Color United (SOCU) Summit 2024, scheduled for May 31, 2024. In the letter, EPP detailed substantial evidence that for 2021-2023, the SOCU Summits were limited to students and staff ‘of color’ and that the 2024 Summit promoted the same racial exclusion.

At a Board of Education on May 28, 2024, Dr. Brown addressed EPP’s letter and denied that any students ever were excluded from any event based on identity or race, and proclaimed that the SOCU 2024 Summit was “open to everyone.”

On May 30, 2024, ICSD sent a mass email, stating: “The Students of Color United (SOCU) Summit will be held this Friday, May 31, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Ithaca High School. Please know that SOCU is open to all of our secondary students. We apologize for any previous communication that included exclusionary language about the event. Anyone who wishes to attend on Friday is welcome!”

EPP then went through some of the evidence it had gathered, including promotional posters, mass internal emails to staff and students, and other documents showing that ICSD at the highest levels, including the Board of Education, was aware of the practices and at least two complaints regarding the discrimination.

So, on August 12, 2024, the Equal Protection Project (EPP) filed a Civil Rights Complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against the Ithaca, NY City School District (ICSD). The Complaint alleges that ICSD, which is a recipient of federal funding,

systematically excluded white students from SOCU Summits with the knowledge and the participation of dozens of teachers and administrators, knowledge of the Board of Education, and despite multiple complaints about the racially discriminatory practices from members of the community. The Frequently Asked Questions section of the official SOCU Summit website even included an explanation as to “Why aren’t white students invited?” and required that registering students “acknowledge that this is a Student of Color ONLY event.”

The Complaint alleges further that “[t]he discrimination was not a mere “communication” problem, it reflected systemic discrimination against white students as to SOCU Summits” and that “[i]t is hard to imagine more open, prolonged, and intentional racial discrimination.”

The Complaint then sets out, in detail and using ICSD’s own website, and documents including emails from ICSD School Board members, the eligibility conditions for ICSD’s SOCU Summits and the evidence that ICSD intentionally excluded white students.

The Complaint asserts that ICSD, through its SOCU Summits, is violating the United States Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1866:

Because ICSD is a public school district, these programs that discriminate based on race and skin color violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harv. Coll., 600 U.S. 181 (2023), the Supreme Court declared that “[e]liminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it …. The guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color. If both are not accorded the same protection, then it is not equal.” Id. at 34 (cleaned up). “Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry [including race] are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.” Id. at 35.

 

Further, because ICSD also receives federal funding, these programs also violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VI”) and its implementing regulations. In discrimination cases, it does not matter if a recipient of federal funding discriminates to advance a benign “intention” or “motivation.” See, Bostock v. Clayton Cty., 590 U.S. 644, 661 (2020) (“Intentionally burning down a neighbor’s house is arson, even if the perpetrator’s ultimate intention (or motivation) is only to improve the view.”) “Nor does it matter if the recipient discriminates against an individual member of a protected class with the idea that doing so might favor the interests of that class as a whole or otherwise promote equality at the group level.” Students for Fair Admissions, 600 U.S. 289 (Gorsuch, J., concurring)…Regardless of ICSD’s reasons for sponsoring and promoting the SOCU summits, it is violating Title VI by doing so.

The Complaint then summarizes and requests OCR take action:

The Office for Civil Rights has the power and obligation to investigate ICSD’s role in creating, offering and promoting the SOCU Summits – and to discern whether ICSD is engaging in such discrimination in its other activities, particularly affinity programming. This is particularly important because this is not the first time that ICSD has engaged in blatant race-and color-based discrimination, and ICSD escaped OCR action before only because it apparently falsely represented “that all of the District’s programming is open to all participants regardless of race and there are no affinity groups or other programs that are exclusionary based on race.”

 

It is therefore of paramount importance that this time around OCR impose remedial relief that will not only hold ICSD accountable for its unlawful conduct but that also will send a powerful deterrent message to it and other institutions that invidious discrimination, and misrepresentations to OCR about that discrimination, will not be tolerated. This includes, if necessary, imposing fines, initiating administrative proceedings to suspend or terminate federal financial assistance and referring the case to the Department of Justice for judicial proceedings to enforce the rights of the United States under federal law. After all, “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch., 551 U.S. at 748.

 

Accordingly, we respectfully ask the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to impose remedial relief regarding ICSD’s systemic four-year exclusion of white students from Students of Color United Summits, and to ensure that all ongoing and future programming through ICSD comport with federal civil rights laws. It is imperative that racial discrimination stop in all of ICSD’s programming. Unfortunately, based on this evidence of the involvement and knowledge of discriminatory programming at senior administrative levels of ICSD and the Ithaca Board of Education, ICSD’s promise alone is not sufficient and cannot be relied upon.
OCR needs to impose remedial relief.

 

We also request that OCR open an investigation into whether ICSD made material misrepresentations to OCR in 2023, when, according to OCR, ICSD represented that “all of the District’s programming is open to all participants regardless of race and there are no affinity groups or other programs that are exclusionary based on race” despite the ongoing exclusion of white students from ICSD SOCU Summits. It is critical to the integrity of OCR’s investigative function that OCR be able to rely on representations from public school districts, and if ICSD made material misrepresentations in 2023 regarding race-based programming, OCR should consider all available remedies.

OCR is evaluating EPP’s Complaint for further action.